Perry’s Pair-o-dice
Texas governor Perry, Republican contrary,
Balked at the federal Democratic dollars as a dole,
But now will borrow because the budget’s in the hole.
Rejecting help on party principal can get pretty hairy.
We have other serious problems in our state,
Starting with a board education in the Stone Age,
Although that era might be a somewhat later stage
In the creationist and bible science to which they relate.
Our futurist legislators want our collegians carrying guns,
(Some already giving sainthood to ex-Gov Palin),
Yet quite unbothered that our Lone Star state trails in
College access and completion, the lack of education stuns!
Our red state’s flower is bluebonnet and our tree pecan:Rich in nuts, libertarians abound: isolated every woman and man.
Coalition of the Confused and Contradicted
Ralph Reed’s at it again, ‘less strident and more inclusive’,
(Baby-face wiped clean post pigging out in Abramoff trough) --
Younger and hipper? These euphemisms are not enough
To let us forget previous campaigns. We aren’t delusive.
He bilked Indian tribes while pounding the bible for votes;
Solid ethics base to form “Faith and Freedom Coalition”?
Slick faith-hawker needs from democracy extradition:
Keep theocratic clutches off our democratic throats!
Though hipocracy’s not hard to highlight in public sleaze,
Faithful’s innocent snake-oil purchase continues to puzzle.
Blind faith and racism’s hold is rationality’s muzzle,
And vile preachers continue deep prejudices to please.
A majority of our voters demonstrated Ralph’s a thin reed.
Keep religion out of government: by reason & law decreed.
A Pox on Preacher
In full disclosure, my continuum of faith’s atheist to agnostic,
And I’m somewhere in the middle depending on the day
And how angry proselytizers make me with display
Of hate, judgment and stances totally of sin diagnostic.
Reverend Drake prays for Obama’s death as God’s wish,
An act clearly drawn from the bible story preceding Testament New,
Quoting a Yahweh bellicose, vengeful and loving few:
O.T. prophets and God quotes, a bile-full bitter dish.
Imprecatory prayer, in memories of Christ love lore,
Is a contradiction, a dis-mount from high-point blessed,
Where the poor, meek and the peaceful were stressed.
What Christ sermon focused on damnation and gore?
Who am I this Wiley preacher to contradict?
Yet loving Christians will flee this flock, I predict.
Cell War Stemmed
Daniel Kraft invents a better way to harvest bone marrow
Kraft’s device for harvesting bone marrow,
Minimally invasive and novel, clever craft;
Current, healthful, efficacious body graft:
Extending life: speeding up it’s pace tomorrow.
Until the fatal fetus clash with moral codes,
Cells of stems were not much in public mind.
Battle ignited by scientific search for cure find,
Is painful culture war that community corrodes.
Pro-lifers can be lukewarm – show compassion dearth --
About death penalty, starvation, even genocide.
But abortion, to them it’s worse than matricide.
Where’s the extension of passion for life after birth?
Meanwhile back in the lab where scientists labor
For Parkinson ill et al, those stems are a life saver.
Ensigns of the Times
New allegations in Sen. John Ensign sex scandal
“Tis a good divine who follows his own preaching” W. Shakespeare.
Vocabulary poses one dilemma; moral preaching another.
One who money takes for sexual favors, usually untaxed,
And the man, usually, who benefits and manages, relaxed;
Both known names and labels global: to moralists a bother.
The plethora of terms, formal and otherwise, reflect
The universality and age of the profession. Hypocrites,
Term for contradicting actions (joke fodder for local wits)
Value-pushers committing sins to which they object.
So prostitute and pimp, much used and understood,
We keep from young’uns: shock us but don’t surprise.
Humans many times do what they say they despise.
Political contrasts abound: private sins, faking good.
Illicit sex inflames me not: free or for hire;
Ensign, Hampton and wife: fire, fire!
Will She? Alaska. #sonnet #palin #politics
Palin bared her son Republican doesn’t vote;
She plans to stump for those conservatives,
Democrats of right, who’ll win her superlatives.
Partisan stuff she’s tired of, please note.
Stunning her party with sudden departure as Gov,
She’s announced a leap back to the national scene;
There’s still a base adoring the conservative Queen.
The test is how many fans still pledge their luv.
Republicans shun her if their race is tight,
It’s hard to think of Democrats who’ll
Ask her to stump: maybe high-roller or fool
Will want Sarah in their re-election fight.
Democrats are carrying the country’s complex woes;
The GOP's lost: says shrewd Sarah, anything goes.
Blow the Whistle, Will You, Wendell
Of two Potters making news this week, brave Wendell
I proclaim. Harry’s mad entourage outstrips his gifts,
And non-fiction’s insurance scam kiss-and-tell
Is CIGNAfying fast-talks, deep health business rifts.
Details and office secrets, intuited without the facts,
With Wendell’s testimony leave no nagging doubts:
Insurance health-needs leeches leave clear tracks;
Saw it from the inside: mapped all veins and routes.
Mega moneyed-interests have funded many friends;
Elected to office, unfriendly to anti-insurance stands.
Damning data facing congress, insurance side upends.
Burning question: Well-fed congress, biting feeding hands?
Sweet snitch, prescribe in patient’s speeches;
Is Harry’s magic needed to snuff health leeches?
Man of a Thousand Feces[1][1] #cheney #sonnet #terror #warcrimes #tcot
Cheney hid the facts, for the wiser good of all;
Couldn’t trust the secrecy of chatty congress folks.
Fighting AlQueda terror, he cooked up tales so tall:
Dick’s secret omelet calls for muchos broken yokes.
Security’s serious work, not for the faint of heart.
Macho warlike-stand must also tight be wed
With plans kept far from fools; spooks high art
Hid from liberals, and those who war had fled.
Warranted eavesdropping ‘s bad enough to take
But not having the permission was the pits.
Rights and constitution plowed under in its wake,
Privacy intrusion okay? oh come now, legal wits!
Dick, Alberto and W: those were war crimes.
You warred on us: Shame! Flag-waving slimes.
Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency
CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify
The Health Insurance Alka-Seltzer
Drop, Drop, Recizz, Recizz,
Oh what a relief it is.
Got a tumor, new malignant growth?
Sorry, pre-existing, to cover it we’re loathe.
Drop, Drop, Recizz, Recizz,
Oh what a relief it is.
Your wife is diabetic, your pain is chronic?
Dialisis costs dearly: rest for her, you try tonic.
Drop, Drop, Recizz, Recizz,
Oh what a relief it is.
Your dying parent needs hospice care?
Home’s filled with paying folks, no spare.
Drop, Drop, Recizz, Recizz,
Oh what a relief it is.
Where’d people get ideas so crazy and infirm;
Health Insurance is for protection, long term?
Drop, Drop, Recizz, Recizz,
Oh what a relief it is.
Rescission’s how to make profits to the max:
All major ills pre-exist, give that bill the ax.
Gay couple cuffed, cited after kiss near LDS temple
Late Day Stupidity
L. D. Saints studs don’t kiss cheeks;
Bad public behavior’s a cause for arrest.
Arab men smooch quite openly, I don’t jest.
Mormons better not preach to Arab sheiks.
Utah’s irony is: Arabian men agree
With same sex stance, against gay stands.
Eastern straight men do smooch, hold hands;
Macho brother love, though sex they flee.
Back to LDS and public hugs and pecks;
Boys with girls, and girls with girls okay;
But men with men is big no-no, bad display.
Worse than child marriage or wife-cheat sex.
Men in public clinch: manacled, booked:
LDS laws: sooner, later, be they nuked.
Pinko, Sicko Pervert: Uncovered
Preamble
A business is for profit. Non-profits are for charity.
Never the twain shall balance the same spread sheet.
Running a business requires economic sense and clarity.
If a firm spends more than it makes: bankruptcy and defeat.
Basic Principles
Health is a privilege; blessed, hard-work perk;
Sane living, careful saving brings wealth, health.
To think otherwise is to be welfare queen jerk.
Attacking healthy business is communist stealth.
Bad Systems
Cradle to grave public health systems are bad.
Those people getting healthcare for nothing
Are subsidized by taxpayers, all being had.
Socialism cancer: seen with fear and loathing.
Our populist health movement, the current fad,
On basic free market, growth and profit has trod.
For hospitals, doctors, all health industry, bad.
Bad health? poetic justice for uninsured clod.
Systemic Disease
Hardworking health workers deserve living wages;
We’re hacking away, trimming health profits.
Our great system, cut down and diminished in stages.
Poor Health, life inequality: myths of doomsday prophets.
Chinese Puzzle
'I asked them to find my husband, but no one dared to go outside'
Dong Yuan Yuan, ethnic Han and husband on a trip,
Attacked in bus, beat up, bruised...she's at a loss.
He’s missing, she’s grieving, carrying heavy cross;
Urumqi riots, exploding, echoing Gaza strip.
She hopes to find him, whether dead or alive.
Better to know something... Just got married,
New life about to start...if only bus hadn’t tarried...
Now everything is…to survive, strive, how to revive?
Personal tragedy, rudely intrudes in social tensions,
Confounding bureaucrats and capitol city planners;
Ignored, impugned social segments have bad manners.
Local Uighur Han clash has global dimensions.
There’s never good reason for innocent couple caught
In uprising: fatally fraught in what state hate’s wrought.
Doctored Docu-Defense
#7 in homage to FoodInc
FoodInc critics bashing biased excesses:
Expected from cooler minds, whose filmscript,
Slant-free version would play well in a crypt.
Fast food crisis needs noise to waken dead.
Hashtag twit search quickly reveals each side:
Film fans rabid, preaching good food gospel;
Sane critics proselytizing to food attack repel:
Hope: conversation increases, doesn’t subside.
Michael Moore extreme pics were demonized,
Kenner’s also criticized for narrow view,
His docu’s tainted drama, food-ism, in lieu
Of schlock-fat free, all-side study, sanitized.
Shockumentary: frontal crudity’s the two-by-four,
Between eyes needed: rated-X food porno, hard-core.
Goldman’s Down on the Matt
The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi’s Great American Bubble Machine,
Revealed in high relief, mass-thieving ways;
Sachs market manipulation since depression days:
Ired Goldman Sachs, gone green with sputtered spleen.
Expose tagged ‘conspiracy theory compilation’
Exaggerations, distortions: myths no one trusts;
We’re not inflators of bubbles nor profiteers in busts.
That Rolling Stone article is vile misinformation.
Sachs is everywhere, so’s Goldman: vampire squid.
Humanity’s face is tentacled, blood-money sucked;
Treasury, market and World Bank, every money duct:
A history and high class scandal: we need to blow the lid.
Yo Matt, you’re David and monstrous Sachs, Goliath;
Sling stones, maybe wounded giant thief dieth.
Bread Burnt/Phone Thrown #sonnet #humor
Woman Jailed After Man Complains About Her Cooking
Mulcahy, quoted, “burned the bread she was cooking
Because she was so intoxicated.” Heavens to Betsy!
Backseat belligerent, recorded, would’ve been, let’s see,
“Drunk” “shit-faced” color intensified at booking.
Meredith, sixty-six, made a missile of the phone
When senior citizen lover rejected burnt toast
(Older but serving younger woman, he’d boast)
Event had farce, pathos, and all but loving tone.
She, battery charged, elder person the recipient;
Both class fated-targets of events cruel and narrow.
This incident one more painful, piercing arrow
In game whose bulls-eyes aim more pain incipient.
Humorous headline of domestic fight, arrest,
Trivializes poor-folks battles: neither fun nor jest.
These Genes Were Made for Cloning… #sonnet #foodinc #
6th in series: Homage to Food Inc.
Genetic engineering gives pause and concern;
This novel techno changing of the core and stem
Of life, makes us chicken hearts haw and hem;
Can serious scientists long-term effect discern?
Inserting code genetic into one of different form
Proposes potent biotech brave new wedding
Unique, antique original codes shedding:
Genes human for pigs, cattle -fish: now the norm.
Frankenstein stitchwork’s tame for today’s
Wild quilts woven from improbable materials;
Techno looms enlacing new batched bacterials:
Witness mad-matched permutations and displays.
Though fears be dreary downers and the voice: doom;
Allergenic issues, toxicity and kin: they’re in the room.
The Devil and Daniel Radcliffe
Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe's coming clean;
Witchcraft’s not a popular atheist sport,
Dan’s not a muddleheaded film star sort --
Magic in real life’s not for what he’s keen.
Christian zealots are bound to boycott Harry
And the Half-Blood Prince on principle;
He’s risking fan wrath this devil’s disciple.
Bible-thumpers poo-poohing, wizard-wary.
Actor in Esquire admits, for godless Dawkins, respect;
A statement that surely will slow ticket sales.
But profits won’t be meager, over religious wails;
Interest immense in stories & films, last time checked.
Film damning and book banning, whatever the source,
Increases the interest, brightens the spotlight, of course.
Thickener in the Coffee
"Malaysian authorities have confiscated 900 boxes of coffee laced with Viagra, a newspaper report said."
“Kuala Lumpur cupa’ll get your joint a jumpin’!”
Malaysian confiscated coffee’s Viagra laced.
This morning jolt of java bodes undies braced,
Unforseen erectile functions will be sumpin’.
Will sudden stiffness replace breakfast sausage?
Coffee cream can't cool body heat, instead,
And reverse the path from breakfast nook to bed?
Dongs dormant long doubly need a dosage.
Caffeine addiction’s considered a milder affliction
Though no substance vice is pure virgin notion;
Invigorating coffee with spicy sex potion
For uncoupled couples, both curse & benediction.
The beverage brown wakes us, aroma so bold,
Now rouses member’s memories: rising, as of old.
Fast Answers to a Fasting World
5th in homage to Food Inc.
Open jaw, jam the junk food in;
Fats and Sweets, taste buds go ga-ga.
Make our business boom beyond mega;
Organic nuts, go to hippy, commie sit-in.
Obesity ain’t bad, you bag of bones,
What’s wrong with well-fed plump?
Pear shapes’ in, don’t throw stones;
Might be chubby, but no toxic waste chump.
Fried can’t be bad: it tastes so good,
You’ve swallowed Food. Inc liberal lies.
It’s everywhere: cheap, super-sized fast food.
It’s unamerican to villify burgers and fries.
So third world’s starving needing nutrition?
Send Taco Bells, big Big Macs, not contrition.
Why Did You Have to Show It?
4th in homage to Food Inc.
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
I quake and feel the fall of dark and dank,
What hours, O what black hours they have spent
Each night! What sights seen; blindfolds rent!
More brute gore, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Brute hear mechanical. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dying sows sent
To prodders, stabbers, and all who animals slay.
I’m bile, gall, and brine. Food lusts dour decree
Bitter leaves my taste, of life waste, let me flee!
Guilty ire leaves me with factory fleshed curse.
Recurring food line crimes hunger sours. I see
Processors chained for pay, their scourge to be
In factory line, their sweating selves; but worse.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day ,
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
Slot Machine Streaker
Casino Pots Crashed by Pot-crazed Cop-chased
Nude – ‘Terminator’ passing coins jangling
Of slot machines: parading privates dangling.
Bare-bottomed he blazed, then downed, tase-dazed.
Poker pot, clothes-losing, strip-game loss reversed:
This L.S.D. streak in the buff was dumb dash;
Jewels familial in Harrah’s won’t win hard cash.
Wishful youth, cashing bare-balls, as chips reimbursed?
Life’s a gamble, a race, and you die in the end.
Nothings certain, sure win or fixed but your death,
And that in retro, stop-watch stopped with last breath.
This buff cheeked chap chose fast life baring his end.
Suffering sentence and fines, losing pants dropped in haste:
Audience chuckles and confides: laughter’s a win not a waste.
The High Cost of Labor
3rd in homage to Food Inc.
No, we won’t, faux news foxes, fuel your fires
Fanning flames of hate gainst solid workforce
Who’ll kill then chop beef carcasses, jobs no worse,
Slicing guts, gutting entrails: most docile cheap hires.
If big business you bless, back and kiss, be not liars:
We pry profits from food factories without remorse.
Undocumented foreigns are undoubtedly the course;
No union hype type, no gripe: all U.S. dream buyers.
Production slaughter line needs labor divided,
Discrete tasks studiously assigned, done and re-done.
Actions are robotically repeated once decided.
Avoid a change or miss or break once chain’s begun.
Being unfeeling bot in job is meat production need:
Ship in subservient masses as factory fodder and feed.
Meet the New Manufactured Meat Product
2nd in a series as homage to Food Inc.
Cows force fed corn against natural grass needs
Produce ecoli tinged product, also salmonella prone:
Poisonous meat that’s milled and mutilated to the bone,
This new beef on hoof that killing bugs breeds.
The bacteria-battling heeds chemical deeds:
Harsh rays and bleaches food factories condone.
When meat is ground or grandly bright red shone,
What parent begrudges child’s cheap fast food feeds?
Taste buds addictions cause junk to taste good;
For poor workers: bad food sold cheap in cold blood.
Forget greens, grains and nutrients for growth and health!
Organic’s more costly and far from blue collar hood;
The nearby junk-food neath arches or churches, that’s good.
(Like good schools and health, nutrition’s a privilege of wealth.)
Eat It: Don’t Be Chicken
1st in a series as homage to Food Inc.
In a dungeon-dark chicken tunnel of a plant
Top-heavy hens weak boned crowdedly dwell;
Choppy feather waves, dirty spumed but water scant,
Force-fattened to become our tenders in short spell.
Thousands caged and crushed eventually to grant
Enlarged breasts, thighs and legs: strange cells!
What do these super-genes engender? Sue who tells.
The revenue’s so great, it’s retrograde to rant.
Poultry produced now pale copies of what was chicken
The business boom has basic gene code stricken;
Molting masses milling to furnish fatty future meals.
Fast food chains need cheap food that’s finger lickin’,
(As unhealthy fats and sugars body bellies thicken)
Thank Pilgrim and Tyson et al, the dollar deals are steals.
(I’m experimenting with sprung rhythm and alliteration ala Gerard Manley Hopkins, though without his brand of faith.)
Tight, Isn’t It?
The U.K. Telegraph online headlined walkers
On rope so high and tight few humans have
The guts to tip toe, glide or be height stalkers;
Mega meters vertical (where’s the lav?)
Ahdili Wuxiuer, Prince of Walking (Tightrope)
Records broke in style of Syrian Simeon (Saint)
Spending many days on pillar of no slope:
For either honor no place for feeling faint.
The British news on this occasion linked
To last year’s films on other men in clouds,
A French obsession oft to scale the heights:
Feats craved by journalists and circus crowds.
If men attempt these risky deeds, just because,
There’s hope: some’ll scale heights for just cause.
Coup-Coup-Ru, Honduras
About Honduras I’ve been silent though
Iran and Baguas were quite sonnetized.
Today I read a Honduran blog, pro coup,
With venom toward ex president despised.
The global ire at exclusion and exile
Of leader elected though a threat to elites
Gives deadly import to weapons held erectile,
Auguring for battles with the people in the streets.
The poor and the workers outnumber the rich by far,
In strength so great they chose the president.
The wealthy forced the change for populist plans to bar.
Their force can’t exile hopes still resident.
Preaching the greatness of democracy’s ship to all
We fear it’ll sink on socialism’s shore siren call.
Don’t Bug Me: Freddie and Bryan Would be Proud…
Kate Sherrod’s sonnet once more stirred my brain:
Research at Queen’s (Canadian U) on locusts
(See Debbie’s Insect Blog) on migraine pain.
I’d thought the light, some diets even micro dusts
Were triggers, but extreme conditions cause
A brain cell shut down, ergo comatose bugs.
Which makes me wonder, question and take pause:
Do headache’s need to freezing instead of drugs?
Researchers prevented insects from comatose state
And think they might use same chemicals for good
With humans suffering such painful chronic fate.
These meds can’t come too soon for pain withstood.
I flashed those films of bible plagues and rock:
Yes, we will rock you, bugs, in head ache block.
Reverse the Charges on This Call
She’s got a calling from on high to serve
How can lesser mortals challenge such a role?
To fulfill it for America’s right with verve;
We tremble for all enjoying stimulus dole.
We quake for abortion seekers and their clinics;
For all who seek to wed same sex and allies!
Prepare for battle all ye liberal, atheistic cynics;
St. Sarah’s coming to the anti-anti-family rallies.
The logic’s clear, the reasons strong, don’t fear;
Knight-ess will mount a steed off-white to battle,
To rally troops in disarray and rightly steer
With whoops and yells big govmint cages rattle.
Please leave that icey state up northern way:
The Late shows need you and so does Tina Fey.
Lame Duck Won’t Milk a Paycheck
“Many just accept that lame duck status, and they hit that road. They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I'm not going to put Alaskans through that," she said.
Alaska traded Parnell for Palin July fourth
While dealt mixed metaphors of cows and ducks.
Alaskans have other bills to pay, for what it’s worth;
A governor’s paycheck hasn’t udders big in bucks.
If anything, what fattened cows there are to milk,
They’re more of import than any duck that limps.
It’s the oil-rich udders, ooh to squeeze and bilk:
Governor’s small percs ? really just for wimps.
If duck so lame must trip the plans for fame
Why should we care she isn’t reaching for the sky?
The party sang there’s nothing like a dame
Who hates abortion and has a big business high.
If enterprise be free and Palin’s swinging right,
What prize does Sarah seek, or just scandal fright?
I Run Iran: I’m the Man!
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election was a landslide,
No question: I’m the man, I run Iran.
If you disagree by Basijii goons you will be eyed,
With special interest if you’re an angry young man.
When hated Shah in 80s was deposed to exile
The mood for change brought Mullahs to the fore;
A theocratic state made many freedoms fragile,
But little love was lost for ruler U.S. backed before.
With shifts of culture and omnipresent internet
Iranians are tweets and in facebook, trans-global;
To nervous state, tech walls are porous and a threat.
Plugging leaks is keeping in a desert frozen snowball.
Ali-Reza is clear after jail: “Now I know whom I hate”.
They are wild and not human.” Mahmoud just you wait.
The Complex Sports of Palin Politics
Is Wasilla Sports Complex, Sarah Palin,
Really the reason from Alaska you’re bailin’?
What other good reason from office to resign?
Is it just in our nature for your honor to malign?
Who fed us the bit about pit bull with lipstick?
We’d like to check oil with popular dipstick.
In complex sports politics have you some guilt,
About deviated money, to have your house built?
The stimulus trough is full: you’ve got a mouthful.
The times are tough and you must be resourceful;
Believe, model mom, that we’ll still believe in you.
It’ll all wash out when this machine-load's through.
I’m sure we’re wrong and made some terrible mistake.
Why shouldn’t you feed yourself -- why else have the cake?
Seeking Slime in the Sewer
http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/2009/07/of-slime-zappa-ants-and-worms.html
Of Slime, Zappa, Ants And Worms (Thanks, Kate)
http://deepseanews.com/2009/06/creatures-from-the-sewer/
Anelid worms in clumps, tubificids to some,
Will cause wonder and interest for days to come.
Cnidarian’s one bad guess and so’s bryozoan
It’s a cryptozoological puzzling Zen Koan.
A slimy creature in the hidden sewer oozing:
It’s enough to get Raleigh city workers boozing.
With strange tentacles like fingers and retracting
Without soil and muck are with self interacting.
So Doctor Wood expert on worms from water fresh
Some bryozoa doubts cleared up on pulsating mesh.
Movement resulted from single worm pulsing
And the others in concert contracted: repulsing!
Upon entering the pipe, finding absence of soil,
These lost little zooids ‘round each other did coil.
Goal Ghoul
With apologies to William Shakespeare's Sonnet LX
Like images appearing in pixilated screen,
So do our visions hasten to their end;
Each iconic view of goals we must wean,
With fresh and higher goals must contend.
Creative aims scrutinized in the laptop light
Move to maturity, new dreams are crowned;
Competing interests ‘gainst this plan fight,
And Time the bitch does cloud and all confound.
Time doth transfix the vision set in youth
And calls to mind the hopes in teen's brow,
Feeds on the memories of youthful truth,
And scythe ready your green thoughts to mow:
No fear, in time you hope, this verse will stand
Attesting your goals, despite her cruel hand.
Sonnet LX William Shakespeare
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend.Nativity, once in the main of light,Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.Time doth transfix the flourish set on youthAnd delves the parallels in beauty's brow,Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:And yet to times in hope, my verse shall standPraising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
Things Getting Gay Better…
(With very special thanks to W.S. Sonnet LIX)
If gay be nothing new, but that which is,
Has been before, how are bigots beguiled
Who strive with hate to bear false witness
Of original interest and direction since a child?
If we could scroll and scan with backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
View the pictures raw in some antique book;
The insults and death blows to queer men done.
That we might see what the old world could say
And do to those who carried this gender flame.
Whether limbs are mended, less hateful, they,
Or whether evolution’s made equity the game.
Pleasure I get from bits and scatterings of praise,
The time’s been worse, we know, for queers and gays.
Sonnet LIX (W.S)
If there be nothing new, but that which isHath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,Which labouring for invention bear amissThe second burthen of a former child.Oh that record could with a backward look,Even of five hundred courses of the sun,Show me your image in some antique book,Since mind at first in character was done,That I might see what the old world could sayTo this composed wonder of your frame;Whether we are mended, or where better they,Or whether revolution be the same.Oh sure I am the wits of former days,To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
If Palin & Sanford Were Wed…
If Palin and Sanford politically were ever to wed
What cartwheels and leg splits the faithful would do.
Would family values, and radio talk morals pull through?
With soul mate Latina and pit-bulls all past must be shed.
The cheap shot to take is to target lies found on tape,
But humans are humans, dear gov, and erring’s innate.
I wish I could easily blame him for illicit mate,
But boxing us all in perfection, no sir, sans escape.
The family values and ethics the right makes its own
Are actually favored and campaigned by liberal bleeders,
Who’re fierce fighters and persistent interceders,
For families powerless and the poor: all well known.
Faux populists, icons and rabble rousers on the right:
Your political excesses’ve made our economy a fright.
Keeping up with Kate:
Killing Cockroaches, the sequel.
In Which I Ponder Cockroach Fat http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/
Feed the fat to cockroach young and tender
Hopefully, catastrophically the final ender.
These bugs have been with us since world began,
Let’s see if diet poison stops this bug of man.
How sweet the death of these annoying mites
To come from food excesses and fattening bites.
I wish my taste buds for fruit and veggies drooled,
But truth, all the sugared, fatty foods are bejeweled.
If only genes and nurture faded from my armature
And healthy traits reigned who fats would censure.
This vice of verse is nurturing a taste for sonnet
Far healthier than rich dessert with whipped cream on it.
Boo to Beck
Michael Scheuer’s a bit brighter than Limbaugh or Beck,
But all are suggesting such dire acts of aggression
I judge Fox confabs just unpatriotic nuts in session:
Just note their desire for Osama this country to wreck.
My voice and taste brings up the word draconian;
It’s just the term for wishing terms extreme.
Those deadly nightmares aren’t America’s dream.
Perversely asking for dire deaths so Gomorrian.
Those weak liberal genes that our freedom are killing,
Massive bombing would cleanse from national blood.
Irrational Fox-nuts wishing bomb storms and war flood:
Our purified bones stripped clean but dead? Chilling!
As Glenn and Michael sling crap pseudo-patriotic,
Our liberal minds, pro-living and hopeful, consider’em idiotic.
So Long Sarah
A notice most terse has been tweeted about Sarah:
She’s no longer running for gov of Alaska.
Whatever her reasons, the real one I’ll aska:
Is spotlight revealing your values too narrah?
With base in retreat, dissolving and shrinking in size,
Republican Party is sweating and wringing its hands:
Dicey bible cherry-picking ‘bout Jesus’ commands,
Weaving fat-cat elitists with blind faith not wise.
So Palin my simple, it’s plain that you pale in the glare
Your down-home solutions aren’t really a truth you present
You mouth market freedom that’s for rich folks meant:
Our country’s harsh problems need more than a prayer.
Good bye dearest Sarah: the face and the bod aren’t too bad:
Folks fearing-god, loving mom, apple pie: you’ve been had.
Vege-Contrarian Verses
No dead meat of animal touches these lips, I say;
A fish or a shell on occasion does enter my gullet:
But pig or beef steak, even pullet, from plate I do pull it:
Didn’t plan, just vegged out, in my first Buddhist stay.
My carnivore fam’s in shock over meatless diet:
My father, long gone, didn’t think it a meal without meat.
My cuz thinks my body’ll suffer from ‘carne’ retreat
I don’t miss the meat but I’m fat ‘cause I fry it.
My Mexican taste buds are addicted to fried foods and lard:
No thinking or reading can douse primal impulse and desire;
A baby fed bacon does pork drool for and require.
Our genes and our nurture create tastes and die hard.
I’ve no theory or deep moral reason for tofu and greens;
Except to cause menu problems, contradict and prick spleens.
Un-lock-em Up
The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners; a prison opens in the country every week. Yet this doesn’t make Americans any safer, writes former federal prosecutor Paul Butler in Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice .
We have one fourth of all prisoners on earth;
Yet we’re only five in a hundred people total.
Our penile practice is based on data anecdotal;
Incarceration has of rigorous research, dearth.
Offenders prison sent from fellow inmates
Learn and hone the crim’nal ways and means --
Techniques to gain the tax-free dollar greens:
Cut pen schooling grants! suffer bad ingrates!
It’s clear that justice brings no answer just;
Beleaguered middle class votes unexamined
Prejudice: increase the sentence, championed
And milked by electioneering – jail or bust!
Measures extreme prisons fill with a vengeance;
Safety and peace merits justice: nuanced elegance.
Turning Right and Beck Again
A fascist like Beck through the media draws crowd;
Father Coughlin was cut from the same pile of rags!
Appealling to wage-poor and misinformed scags;
Each preacher, with sway, do make Hitler proud.
With Communist scare and two-faced power desire
These sinister dudes preach to massed angry selves.
Made giants by media, yet pea-brained elves;
The people called little excused, Beck’s a phoney for hire.
The working stiffs remain indentured mass;
But China, Cuba and the soviet states
Did little to inspire, in fact brought hates
Of norms communal: sad dreams of middle class.
The tragic end of states, and social money drills:
Workers lose, 'free market' rules, and fuck human skills.
Faith on First? Noose on Second!
A code thought west but truly kin of Sharia
Is named for Christ of messianic gospel lore.
From hardy fishers twelve to martyr gore
It nets great numbers, this ‘good news’ idea.
If Abraham would see them now embroiled
He’d probably ask “who are these nuts?”;
The code he lived required tough guts --
Islamic east and Christian west are spoiled.
Communities of faith control the state?
A cracy, theo’s bad for human kind
A cruel vise on liberty of mind:
Agnostic lens does each side deprecate.
Whatever form of rule we aim to choose
A faith-based code is freedom’s choking noose.
Arrested Development
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/06/30/fort-worth-police-chief-that-faggot-had-it-coming
Fort Worth Police Chief: That Faggot Had It Coming
The cops invade the Rainbow (queer bar) Lounge!
A ‘Stonewall shades’ was how it all began
Supposed gropes boozy sent several to the can:
The Fort Worth chief must legality scrounge.
One slender Chad was beaten to the ground
They claimed he touched a private part of man.
He’s left with clot of blood in brain to scan,
Though serious charges yet cannot be found.
The common lore is gays will always grope;
A ‘fact’ well known to all the ‘decent’ folk.
Those cheap-shot butts of homophobic joke:
What justice fair can these men dare to hope?
It’s Gibson, Chad, who may not quite survive.
Gay bashing loons? Oh, doing well, they thrive.
Courting Panic
The court of public opinion has a norm:
Gay panic defense is appropriate to rationalize
A murder most foul – When you demonize
Persons for lifestyle their truth you misinform.
A queer man’s touch of bod of one who’s straight
Is violence brute to macho’s love of self;
He puts compassion, kindness up on shelf:
“The hell with justice” actions fed by hate.”
The Fort Worth chief with righteous flare proclaims
‘You’re touched, advanced and groped in ways
Disgusting to all decent men -- such sick displays!
In lawful rage the lawman kicks and maims.
You, chief, with legal club in macho cave of men,
Now face pride’s flag: again, again, again.
Off the Mark (South Carolina #Sonnet)
Governor Sanford uses Twitter to apologize to the state
“Putting the genie back in the bottle”
Means putting your penis back in your pants.
Once “safe before now” your wife wisely grants
What she chooses to, and Maria might throttle.
It’s strange to revisit those clips of your rants
On Clinton’s lewd crimes and misdemeanors:
You were one of those family values leaners
All prologue to your soul-mate ants-in-your-pants.
“To blow off steam” has meant a lot of things
From shadow boxing to karioke songs
The stress of public role and demanding throngs
Call for something, but Mark, mistress flings?
This Argentine affair does presidential flame douse,
Protecting us from another scandalous White House.
Pubs Picked by Peers & Pills for Peckers
http://bigtweet.com/c/b/twitter/queerjohnPA/Y2Kv5
Pray Away the Gay and Penis Pills???
Submitted by David Hart on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 18:06 (see full article below)
Penis pills reviewed by peers are conjoined
In Human sexuality journal not of note
While giving vigorex forte full vote
Push ‘Pray away the gay’ – same-sex purloined
Dr. Ted and researchers take care to promote
Passion's Fire, Nutrisex and Climatique.
Supporting fantasies straight and antique
While dosing homo attractions with strong antidote.
This pub electronic’s an academic joke,
With scientific credentials unimpressive;
Irrational biases biblical and regressive,
Blowing up naïve derrieres with smoke.
Exposé of queer moral studies in faux science togs
Sends homophobe judgments of peers to the dogs.
According to Lifesite, there is now a study that supposedly confirms the efficacy of reparative "therapy" aka "pray away the gay." They further claim that it has been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. That would be [cough] The Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality. Aside from the rather unimpressive advisory board, all you need to know about the EJHS is that they seem to exist to endorse penis pills. Think I am joking? Updated with additional information.
Electronic Journal of Human SexualityThe Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality endorses only products that have been researched by the Institute and which the Institute considers safe and effective. The Institute's name as well as those of Dr. Ted McIlvenna, the board, faculty members and the researchers, are being used without permission to endorse and promote other products not researched by the Institute. The only products for which the Institute has granted a license for these names to be used are: Vigorex forte and Vigorex femme (US trademarks); Passion's Fire; Pleasure; Nutrisex; ProformRX; Improvex and Climatique.
Green with Irany
#1
There once was a face on an icon so green,
The poser must’ve had a troubled spleen:
But it wasn’t his skin,
Nor jaundice from kin,
But murder Iranian: injustice obscene.
#2
How green is my icon for tweets
It tells everyone whom it greets
I’m very concerned
At Justice spurned:
Raw power Iranian minds defeats.
Sino-XXX Google #sonnet
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906133,00.html
Chinese Government Attacks Google Over Internet Porn
Google in China was warned by censors
With claims of links to illegal porno sites;
Children accessing sex acts and rites.
Again Beijing leaders are morals dispensers.
To protect people from lewdness and carnal sin
Is a prudish role often found in states severe,
Judging freedom in sex bad, straight or queer,
Causing consenting adults website chagrin.
Green Dam Youth Escort, the filter imposed
Is probably useful for powers that be
To check on the users who porno do see
But more evil, online state mole enclosed.
Note well: China’s Baidu’s equally x-rated adult,
As user gripes and damns of Green Dam catapult.
Sagebrush #Sonnet
Plant Communication: Sagebrush Engage In Self-recognition And Warn Of Danger
ScienceDaily (June 20, 2009) — To people or animal behavior to thine own self be true” may take on a new meaning—not with with plant behavior.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090619171244.htm
A bush that’s wise with wit beyond our ken,
Has instincts strong to warn its brethren;
Naming sage to grayish brush by wise men…
Perhaps this skill is found in desert and in fen.
When herbivores approach plants of this ilk,
With full intention of draining all their milk,
Are given off-putting shot of invisible silk
This of bush meal the hungry bug does bilk.
We humans think that plants are dumb
And all their wisdom slight, an easy plumb.
We let them flourish but its only crumb
We give, selfish respect going to green thumb.
When scientists give proof of brush so sage
Listen and be still: we might not see another age.
5 Taco Tuesday Twittericks
There once was a gourmet to tacos addicted/
His Tuesday mania was on tweeters inflicted/
With beef, chicken and pork replete/
Sans tacos his meal’s incomplete/
As hopeless carnivore our eater’s convicted.
There once were for tacos a group quite desiring
A Tuesday group culture, license growing not expiring;
Whether chicken or beef
And with thick lettuce leaf
Nonetheless Serrano hot sauce had’em all perspiring.
There once was were Tuesday taco loving tweeple/
Who shouted their TexMex love from a steeple/
When Cinco de Mayo on Tuesday fell/
Creating a rush for every Tortilla shell/
& panicked Mexican cooks scrambled to feed the people.
@MissShuganah My neighborhood Polish delis and taquerias side by side. Polish Delis now even selling some Mexican products.
Commingling Mexican taquerias and Polish delis/
All for the pleasure of our multicultural bellies/
Sausage tacos no one disparages/
Multicultural Tasteful marriages/
International bonds thought up by Machiavelli’s.
Twitterick for #TacoTuesday
A tweeter supportive of TexMex cuisine/
Thought Tuesdays for Tacos was tweeterly keen/
He dished out hash tags/
Frying bland food nags/
& praising the virtues of tortillas and the common bean.
Who is Sheila?
A liberal grandma called Sheila praised a verse I wrote:
Her mold busting bio runs gamut of interests quite broad.
An atheist, feminist bent on outing right wing fraud.
From history to photos and music with oysters: her table-de-hote.
From Center Left to women’s rights she walks her talk
Without a pause to rock in chair or do the granny bit
Through daily trudge with men in dark, lamp lit
She soars for hope, for justice, eternal hawk.
Senescent versifier aglow with Waller’s gifts
Is moved by senior hobbies and vocations,
Confronting ageist notions and cause dislocations;
A mind most agile and interests rich belie age rifts!
Grandma Sheila’s drive is without a sec to waste.
My praise? …Triggered by impeccable poetic taste.
“Eyes Only” For Your Eyes Only
“I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button,” Goforth told NIT. “I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”
Sherri Goforth is a new age racist
Who would rather share her bigotry
Where ugly jokes can surface free,
And race correctness need not exist.
You’d never catch her with a public insult
Even when her anger reached a boil
Her civil discourse curses do not soil:
But ugly backroom bias? consenting adult.
Her error with the emailed ‘eyes alone’,
Was not just prejudice the picture shows,
But insult to Obama role our vote bestows;
The ugly good ole whitey’s cover’s blown.
Egregious image of a man of color
Dims joy of triumph and recalls old dolor.
State GOP staffer sends racist image of Obama.
Terror Error
“Defense Department sees protests as terrorism”
http://tw6.us/Tq
A protest activity is labeled now ‘of terror’,
Though of low level, causes great concern.
Our liberty defenders, most civil, discern:
The department of defense is now in error.
Of all the dangers to our social peace
The peaceful protest is no central threat;
The signs and angry marchers cause no sweat.
The peril comes when basic rights do cease.
Dissent on public issues must be ours;
To teach our feds dissent is mildly wrong
Opens wide the gates for vigilante throng
And gives supposed defenders Nazi powers.
To weaken freedom of our boisterous demo
It simply takes a stupid DoD training memo.
Agony in Iran
Ahmadinejad declared his election the healthiest of its kind;
It’s clear because al-Arabiya’s shuttered for a week
This ilk of election follows a well known streak
Of oppressive politics and media control: we aren’t blind!
Though press is blocked from recording events
As angry protestors confront well armed troops;
Streams on the net feed chaotic scenes in video loops:
Clamp downs on media can’t block bloody segments.
The truth of what’s happening isn’t easy to discern:
Any losing side in a political battle is apt to be ired.
But quick voting tallies smelled of being wired!
It’s no surprise many angry voters did riot and burn.
While press and correspondents were reviled for missing
Events most egregious, tweets have online network hissing.
Un-civil Tongues
Judge Sotomayor is harsh and uncivil some claim,
Unready for appointment most high and suprème --
Not one to be part of jurists, crème-de-la-crème!
Is it liberal, Latin or woman they want to maim?
This heady choice one must ponder serenely with logic
Our country needs those who judge things with calm;
Irritating politics and issues need Constitutional balm,
A freedom from prejudice and stance ideologic.
Feelings and judgements and experience of life
Bring opinions and baggage hard to be left
Behind but sane adult judgement’s still cleft
From bias: reason, precedent and justice’s the knife.
If Scalia, Alito et al have never spoken ill or harsh,
We’re lost on no-media island amid know-nothing marsh.
Answers in Genesis. Question?
"The CreationMuseum is the uncompromising vision of Australian-born evangelical Ken Ham, who aims to "expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas" and "enable Christians to defend their faith". (see below)
Evangelical Ham’s a caretaker of creationist crypt:
Museum's too fine a description for a place,
Where unexamined faith and illogic, fill space
Devoted to pseudo science from biblical script.
A literal take of an ancient oral story does make
A weak substitute for science and rigorous thought;
Even Jesuit paleontologist Chardin who brought
Mystic faith from carbon dating didn’t break.
So please forgive agnostic doubt but I opine
That those believers in a deity must select
A God who with scientific findings doesn’t object --
Natural intelligence discovers sans miraculous sign.
If I believed a god existed and the bible was revealed
I would still want logic, science and rigor to be the ideal.
These are the tracks of the evolution of my sonnet: From Kate's sonnet, to @donttrythis to the BBC news/magazine:
http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/ Sunday, June 14, 2009
All In A Day's Tweet “Creationists unfollow Mythbusters,…”
@donttrythis “Grrr. http://tinyurl.com/mopd4q Creation museum makes me mad. If you think the world is only 6000 years old, please stop following me.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8032641.stm Who goes to a creationist museum?
#caca Origins of Poetic Twitter Movement
2 places for #Caca definition http://wthashtag.com/wiki/Caca & also http://hashdictionary.com/Caca
#domingodelicioso means delicious sunday, and it is part of the #caca movement
Although the author is neither the first nor the sole contributer to the current verse and poetry exchange, since he has become a regular contributor of a variety of verse forms, it seems of value to document some of the roots and nurturing elements of his products. Early on, while limmericks were converted into twittericks, hash tags were of notice and so #caca was birthed. These twittericks will be retweeted periodically so that academics who wish to research the beginnings of the current and growing Twitter Poetry Renaissance might have easy access to some seminal pieces that combine historical incidents, reactions from other tweeters and even possibly some humor (although some would debate all of the above.) Since most pieces have a rhyme scheme and an approximate meter, they qualify as poetry. Pace. AMM
A tweeter from Texas thought witty/
Hash tagged #caca from San Anto city/
One tweet lady he ired /
hard word bullets she fired/
And riddled his lone work: a pity.
A tweeter from Texas hashed #caca/
And sent it to those who wit didn’t lacka/
But one tweet lady with less humor he ired,/
whose tweets in sweetness were mired/
And she smeared his dictionary caca wacka.
A brash tweeter thought self quite amusing/tweeting others freely of his own choosing./He was really quite rude/and sometimes just lewd,/And was soon cut off and driven to boozing.
A social media baron of note/
Wanted everyone to note what he wrote/
He thought himself gifted/
Assuming spirits he lifted/
But sadly never was RTed with a quote.
One fine tweeter with inherited genes/
Produced poetry amazing to deans/
But his haiku and sonnets/
Of sunsets and bonnets/
Didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
When a rec questioned appropriateness of #caca tag, I sent the older twittericks responding to other objectors. She took it as a personal insult rather than an illustration of my versifying other rejections. I thought it would be seen as humorous but never thought she would think I was talking about her because it was a response several weeks old to a completely different person. Nevertheless it did produce another gem from her. Lost her as a follower but gained another poem. See below:
VBassDeBinion
dude- your rude!
I'm no prude.
Not gonna wallow-
choosing to unfollow.
Been real,
but Not a real thrill.
Wish your followers Luck!
A party hat tops the balding pate/
Of this aging tweeter without a mate./
His hearing's not bad
Overweight just a tad,
But old man's flatulence is his fate.
Iranian Villanelle (with apologies to Dylan Thomas) #iran #sonnet
Do not go gentle into Iranian night,
Though streets burn and youth are in the fray;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
While Mousavi‘s people don’t end fight for right,
Because the army troops hold powerful guns they
Go not gentle into that bloody night.
Good people, their courage overcoming fright,
Their stones and fires unable to keep big guns at bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Brave youths staring with unblinking sight,
Dreams blazing like meteors do hope display:
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, fighters in freedom’s plight,
Curse, damn the armies with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into Iranian night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Para(Union)digm Shift
If you change the law, you change the acts;
To shift a feeling takes longer than Behavior.
I would like to be homophobe’s savior,
And change his heart but facts are facts.
When in the South black voters were blocked
We didn’t wait until racist feelings ceased:
Federal law gave ballots: we were pleased.
The truth remains of racist bullets well stocked.
A rise in states who give approval legit
To unions of likes we praise; same rights
A person of color’s voting rights delights.
Human rights are same cloth: can’t be split.
Progressive religion was once racist’s anathema:
Homophobes’ souls need cleansing spiritual enema.
How far from Peru to Iran?
From Peru’s Bagua deaths to streets in Tehran
The clashes of community with government troops
Remind us that governing sometimes means swoops
Of soldiers and flexing of organized brawn.
As different as causes from rainforest Peruvian
To Iranian elections and change seeking youth,
The resistance to official dicta found uncouth
To put it mildly. Power unjust is antediluvian.
In Teheran a broken hope and shattered dreams
In Bagua a loss to natives and to global health;
For both a plea to power: stop the deadly stealth,
From jungle to city street a choral unison screams.
Iranian elections and Peruvian protests are twins:
Populist battles with deadly encounters: who really wins?
Go Not Guardedly…
Holocaust Museum Murder
A guard more cuddly bear than macho brawn
Was coldly martyred by an aging bigot,
Whose bile was nurtured from the media spigot
Of TV Foxes, radio Rushes, all monsters spawn.
A temple to honor Jews horribly decimated,
Bore witness to another death most publicized;
Contrasting the many gassed as they agonized.
Does publicized scandal douse ire accumulated?
The media blaring with news folk’s shock
Belied by twinkle eyes bloody fangs report
Addressing shadow selves, looks to horror resort:
Media vampires suck true compassion and mock.
Hate crime, whether massive and run by the state
Or lone act impulsive, buries human love intestate.
Not With My World, You Don’t!
Dedicated to @1littlefish and to reciprocate an earlier RT.
You hear it often and in many ways: we own the earth;
The other beings are expendable to serve us.
Domesticate, eat and use them: our will's amorphous:
Those creatures with whom we co-exist: what’s their worth?
Our greed and narrow sights ignore the bios not our own,
And are ambivalent toward creatures labeled lesser;
(Though mostly outlawed, human slavery’s still not unknown)
De facto peonage doesn’t move, utility’s a soul suppressor.
We’re plundering carnivores with modern desires
Bingeing on oil, coal and wood for artificial growth,
We’ve machinery poised to level, on huge rubber tires,
Jungle peoples and pristine forests whom we loath.
We’re not owners but misguided stewards who forgot
That all life is webbed and we’re all one Gordian knot.
There was a dear auntie on twitter
Who went bonkers with liars who litter:
Americans for Truth
She considers uncouth
And kicked AFT all the way to the shitter.
Auntie Aft was adept with artillery fire
Aimed at all those who false fronts do acquire
She truth never spared
And always loudly declared:
Every member of AFT is a scurrilous liar.
#Twitterick to Kevin Smith
There once was a Smith with Clerks’and Mall Rats’ luck:
Good Will Hunting, Chasing Amy and Silent Bob didn’t suck.
With Dogma of Mutants, Monsters & Marvels
Jersey Girls and Live Free or Die Hard Daredevils,
Kevin can Catch and Release a Vulgar, Bottoms Up film F**k.
Bagua Baggage
“Demasiadas muertes, demasiada destrucción, demasiado dolor han coronado el fin de semana más trágico que haya experimentado la Amazonía peruana en lo que va del año, cuyo epicentro sangriento ha sido la ciudad de Bagua.” Paco Bardales Diario de IQT http://arellanos.blogspot.com/ 6/8/09
“Too many deaths, too much destruction, excessive pain have crowned the most tragic weekend that the Peruvian Amazon has experienced this year, whose bloody epicenter has been the city of Bagua.”
The massacre and excessive pain have crowned
A tragic weekend in Peru’s story Amazonian;
A strike and police in gory solution draconian,
While highest officials in Lima simply frowned.
The president pompous declared that the natives
Were criminals attempting a coup: and not first class,
Ignoring pillaged forest peoples suffering en masse.
Forgiving the “fearful” Prez a racial odor gives.
The name of Bagua now is spread online;
The left and Eco movement are on alert,
Progressive forces trumpet right wing dirt.
Political capitol is for victims a poor shrine.
Academia, the press, all classes deserve some blame;
Ignoring plight of rainforest protectors stays the same.
Peruvian Villanelle (with apologies to Dylan Thomas)
Do not go gentle into Peruvian night,
Pillaged should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though indigenous people don’t end fight for right,
Because the army troops hold powerful guns they
Go not gentle into that bloody night.
Good people, their courage overcoming fright,
Their frail spears unable to keep big guns at bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Grave men, near death, who see the with blinding sight,
Brave men could blaze like meteors in the fray,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my natives, in rain forrest plight,
Curse, damn the armies with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into Peruvian night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Stolen Sonnet (with modifications)
Steal this heavy, knotted, personal branch.
This fairy thief takes and never grieves.
This man carrying a plant with leaves,
On a stolen blue bicycle no cop to stanch.
My diagonal best is gone and left
From empty room my furniture’s gone!
From the desk my clever list’s withdrawn:
My winter lens in catacomb years bereft.
All saw me stumble, all the ivy and the ginger
All the woodland, all the audience grinned,
All the papers lifted in the gradual wind.
All the moonlight that walked away with you. Zinger.
Time enough for mountains, for breakfast for naught.
Time enough, the morning star, even stolen I thought.
And Theft @rkolewe
Take this heavy, knotted, personal branch.Take this airy thief.Take this man carrying a flat of plants.Take this blue bicycle.My diagonal best.My furniture.My clever list.My winter lens in catacomb years.All the audience saw me stumble.All the ivy, all the wild ginger, all the woodland, all the audience.All the papers lifted in the gradual wind.All the moonlight that walked away with you.Time enough for mountains, for breakfast.Time enough, the morning star, even stolen I thought.
Peruvian Pillage
The struggle of people in the Rainforest of Peru
Is age-old and violent and at the present crux
Of global resource search apocalypse redux
With ‘development’ clearings bidding the jungle adieu.
Even as some struggle to keep forests virgin and intact
To absorb the gasses that threaten biospheric balance,
Expanding urbanity clears and crushes with nonchalance:
‘Development’ is the ‘cool aid’ of a global suicide pact.
Those protecting this inheritance and our children’s legacy,
The perpetual stewards of the earth’s verdant riches
Are now in crisis and attack from capitalist bitches
Who want the land for commerce, earth’s future betrayed.
What to the first world is progress, good business and civilized growth
To the third is pillage, sacrilege and the breaking of a sacred oath.
Ballad of Bared Balls
@tcagent Just been asked to go play naked volleyball...No paparizzi in sight so perhaps I might...Hopefully it wont effect my presidential run
Once there was a nude volleyball player
Called Troy Ziesmer sports clothes nay sayer;
But when the ball was spiked,
To his crotch it hiked
And Troy was kneeling but not in prayer.
@TCAGENT@aureliom I guess its Naked pool volleyball....Hmmmm. Might work out better.
Tee Cee Agent was one cool dude
Who decided to play ball in the nude:
For protecting his jewels
He volleyed only in pools,
So only sturdy body parts would protrude.
UnSonnet for the Unemployed
"@iGet2Work http://www.iget2work.com/
If you're newly unemployed, a seasoned veteran or just fed up with work we’re here for you. Watch some funny videos, have a laugh, do a job search or take a break and smile! iGet2Work is proud to bring you Comedy, Information and Stories. Just remember you are not alone"
To the abundant and newly unemployed we sing
We croon sometimes jolly for those with time free:
To search for a job can be drama, farce or tragedy
Depending on the spirit and resources you bring.
We want you to know you search not alone,
And perhaps give you some mild heart’s ease
With videos, humor and news that hopefully please:
The truth is for income your future’s still unknown.
We can each be fed up with ruts and drudgery dreaded
We might wish money was optional, a take it or leave it
Oh that there be some magic axe to cleave it
But somehow survival and lucre are for common life wedded.
Hark! Some have spurned money and dollars earned:
Exchange and barter are community bonds re-learned.
Bookworm Blues
He was always afraid of big guys:
Not tall ones, but smiling mean looks.
Hurt by their bullying of kids reading books,
As a runt, and alone, he avoided those eyes.
Family fences augmented finite enclosures
For frail only child with parents strict: book was friend.
Starting a tortuous journey of lifelong trend:
Smiles could mean prologues to indecent exposures.
Even as socialization ripened with age
The smile of a stranger appealed with strange
Premonitions of illicit desires and exchange:
How to contain the warring excitement and rage?
Grow up, sissy: it’s history and downward flight.
Face the old hurts and sweeten the sour hates. (Right.)
Atavism by Elinor Wylie
I was always afraid of Somes's Pond:Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,Where laughing boys catch alewives in their handsIn brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.There, where the frost makes all the birches burnYellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shinesLike a polished shell between black spruce and pines,Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.You'll say I dreamed it, being the true daughterOf those who in old times endured this dread.Look! Where the lily-stems are showing redA silent paddle moves below the water,A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath;Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.
Got a moment?
Assure me now my quaking weepy friend:
Why I should all your present pains allay?
Forget your debts to me and fences yet to mend,
Rarely of note, though focused on today.
My shoulder nestles soft your heaving head,
It doesn’t cost me much to give you time:
And through this quiet gift, my soul is fed –
That you cry on without surcease: no crime.
If I could turn your tears to peace and guide
Your eyesight towards a middle path and trend
Of steps to move beyond the pain inside --
Some vein or spur or branch outside to wend.
Disgorging hurts and pain: tears flow discharged:
To view within with friend: vista enlarged.
Ms. Cargill the Muse:
A fine sonnet, testament of her superior teaching skills.
"@polkadotclaire: i still have to do that sonnet thing for mrs cargill! ugh and i dont even know why i have to do it when there are only 2 days of school left"
Ms. Cargill, my dear, you’ve assigned me a sonnet!
Realize, madam, there are only 2 days of school left!
I want to wrap this year well and tie a bow on it,
But these poems with fourteen lines leave me bereft.
There I’ve got four on the page and that’s great
But I’m still pretty far from the closing pair!
The pressure of studies' been tough and didn't abate
Please look at this last week I’m tied to screen and chair.
Most Poems are for beauty and love and like that
I’m unsure what emotions to conjure and script,
Because my 'love' gauge is low and 'feel' tires are flat;
Poem gas is empty -- on this last trip my vehicle is stripped.
Ms. Cargill of note, so not to endanger a grade that I need,
Please know I love sonnets, loved class and for my A, Godspeed.
Does It Bear Repeating?
Tell me again, and then tell me once again,
That you respect me. Though the word repeated
Would seem like taped loop and me conceited,
Please remember my ego's weak & I've old pain;
So I in my silent island with attentive ears I strain
To discover whether kind words to which I am treated
Come impatiently and fade away -- interest slow depleted,
And my story of your interest was really dream vain.
So scream your comfort with my presence, who can fear
Too much attention, or better, too much pole to pole
Too many moments, even when encounters sear!
Show you abide me, enjoy our meeting on the whole;
Forget repeated phrases but erupt the silence, dear:
interrupt the isolate: lone words within my soul.
Sonnet 21: Say Over Again, And Yet Once Over Again
Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem 'a cuckoo-song,' as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain
Cry, 'Speak once more—thou lovest! 'Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
But We Digress: Paying the Papists
If I was still a battling Christian I’d kneel
In sorrow, squeezing cross with head low in shame:
Killing a man who heeded pregnancy appeal --
By follower of man who healed blind and lame?
If the love of unborn child is so deep & dear,
Why isn’t it given to expecting mother
And those for her concerned? For fear
Of the life of unseen fetus smother another?
I recall in St. Ed’s U. study of civilization
The Christian shift from barbarian eye-for-an-eye;
Aquinas: End to justify the means is aberration!
Weren’t Roman martyrs early Christian love or die?
The final faith and judgment cannot be to kill for love;
Love all life – If God is, he gives no other law from above.
BONUS SONNET: A Sonnet Duet And Interview With Aurelio Montemayor
Kate Sherrod (aka @qatesiuradewyo) http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/
Sonneteer's note: I had so much fun interviewing Jeremy C. Shipp in sonnet-form that I decided to do it some more. My victim/partner today is education activist, Texan and Twitter poet Aurelio Montemayor. He plays faster and more looser with the language and the metrical constraints of sonnets than I do, but he's an old hand at this here poetry thing, while I'm a five-month n00b. Aurelio is also quite prolific and deliciously opinionated. His blog is at http://parentleadershipined.blogspot.com/; his poetry on his Twitwall on Twitter, where you find him under the alias @aureliomAn education activist does what?Excellent public schools for all I persueDo you think education's in a rut?Public will must give public schools their dueWhen you're not rabble rousing, what do you?Books, films, crosswords, twitter, coffee and wineAnd what to pick you up, when you are blue?Meditation, silent sitting, a Buddhist-lite lineAurelio, why sonnets, do you think?Verse forms I avoided when youngHow have we done so far; are we in sync?We’re good doubles, trippingly on the tongueWhat does the future hold for you, my dear?Die ed advocating, sans loss of humor & poetical ear.
Thou Shalt Not Kill Tiller - Grief & Bereavement
“@BreakingNewsA suspect in the shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller has been arrested in northeast Kansas on I-35, sources tell KAKE-TV.”
To save unborn fetus is being pro-life;
Preventing abortion an intense moral cause.
The campaign to stop the severing knife
Is full-term vocation some wage without pause.
To kill, in fifth commandment, seems absolute:
Prohibition and forbiddance to the flock.
Capital punishment, self-defense and war resolute,
Should be just as sinful or God’s rule mock.
As a man, and being single, I admit it’s somewhat odd,
Preaching to women who men’s unprotection put
In pregnant straits sparing child with unshod rod:
Pro or con I’m bound to stuff mouth with foot.
The answers will never be consensual, easy or clever
Killing Dr. Tiller will solve it never, never, never.
Solve for the Sonnet’s Square Root
“@marshallroberts: What is the square root of a sonnet? (figure this should stir up some passionate dialogue)”
If the mold for a sonnet is fourteen lines
Of iambic pentameter formality,
How does a poet within those confines
Figure square root with poetic decimality?
Half a sonnet would mathematically be a septet
A form not practiced nor well known in the west:
(Or even the economical east I would bet!
Truth is: Mathematics’ not poetry’s measure best.
Pi for problems of area saves the day:
Squaring the circle spoke to a playwright,
But not for sonnets algebraic formulae.
It literally doesn’t add up: sum isn’t right.
At the core remains the verse quandary to solve:
What poetic idea times itself will into sonnet evolve?
Absence Makes…
Once, when I was of tender age, there came
To our evening meal, one who was father’s kin
From Mexican village and with darker skin.
Her look was round and kind: she bore the name
Of my dad’s aunt, foster mother, childhood’s smile.
Warmly and with family comfort she spoke:
“Francisco, we all love you” words to stroke
And rekindle distant bonds. She did dad beguile.
My mother, hard and cleared-eyed, kin’s words recast.
She told dad, “They’re using you, I feel the sting”
My father, kind and trusting, “Don’t stand fast
On doubts you've of my kin. They love steadfast bring”.
Years later, money gone and dad on his last breath,
Neither aunts nor cousins came: all absent at his death.
Blood Feud by Elinor Wylie
Once, when my husband was a child, there cameTo his father's table, one who called him kin,In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin.His look was grave and kind; he bore the nameOf the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile.Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke;"I've been in the laurel since the winter broke;Four months, I reckon; yes, sir, quite a while."He'd killed a score of foemen in the past,In some blood feud, a dark and monstrous thing;To him it seemed his duty. At the lastHis enemies found him by a forest spring,Which, as he died, lay bright beneath his head,A silver shield that slowly turned to red.
Fourteen Lines in Soto-Voce (but not in iambic pentameter)
Obama’s chosen nominee is causing a stir:
The first Latina to join our august legal group
Of justices high and supreme. Quotes from her
Speeches are causing a rightwing war whoop!
Regardless of class, of race and root culture
No one can be neutral and always objective in thought
To accuse this wise woman to be biased legal vulture
Is insanity loud voiced that extreme right has wrought.
The battle for votes on that highest of courts
Will stoke conflagrations on polarized sides
With guesses and doubts of what she supports:
Little in her background hints of what coincides.
I’m just feliz, contento and tickled that Sotomayor,
Is so Latin, and echoes and rhymes with Montemayor.
Sonnet to the Pope’s Strange Latter Day Bedfellows
Eighteen thousand still legal and married
But the new ones the court said aren’t able to tie
The legitimate knot: they shouldn’t have tarried:
Now it’s decreed biblical norms most narrow apply.
The question is whether in matters of state,
Church Separation set by sainted founding fathers,
Revisionist Current Christians may wish to abrogate.
Why not? It so many straight believers bothers.
The Mormon and Catholic decided to fight
This public gay couple penchant for marriage.
They politicked Prop 8 with big money might
And succeeded in separating the horse from the carriage.
If same sex couples are seen as a very strange union,
What’s stranger than the R.C and L.D.S. communion?
A Meditaton on the Merits of Jalapeño & Cheddar Cheetos
Eddie Weingart was a Cheeto addict to the max
So he conducted a tweet survey to get the facts:
The question was how the cheesy goodness cleared
The fingertips, through licking or on napkin smeared.
Was the orange stain washed with soap and water
Or did piggy lips lick the tips: how else dispose the matter?
Commandments about cheese snacks appeared and added to the Bible
Creation days for which Prophet Mister Dude was cheesily liable.
The 8th day added for Jalapeno and Cheddar Cheetos birth
Improved the holy book, Cheetonians thought, with added mirth.
Taking a moral and healthy view that damns this junk food vice
I’ll rationally recommend real cheese from cow’s milk by the slice.
Whatever think those who judge Cheetos tastes crass,
If you don’t pay Eddie’s grocery bill, don’t harass!(jackass)
This sonnet was inspired by the following exchange of tweets on @MisterDude 's page:
11th Comandment - "Lick thy cheesy goodness of thy fingertips always" #CheetoSurveyabout 1 hour ago from TweetGenius
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962841214&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
...but on the 8th day, God created Jalapeno & Cheddar Cheetos!!!about 1 hour ago from TweetGenius
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962837825&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
@EvilGayTwin you're a devoted friend!about 1 hour ago from TweetGenius in reply to EvilGayTwin
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962816230&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
@wx1gdave omg why? #CheetoSurveyabout 1 hour ago from TweetGenius in reply to wx1gdave
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962805695&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
@DMAKron hell yeh he does! Cheesylicious!about 1 hour ago from TweetGenius in reply to DMAKron
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962798834&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
@Topher2882 oh nice! I wanna see! :D. You wouldn't happen to use Blackberry would you?about 1 hour ago from TweetGenius
@MisterDude%20&in_reply_to_status_id=1962783187&in_reply_to=MisterDude">
#CheetoSurvey ... Do you wash the cheesy goodness of your fingers after eating Cheetos or lick them off like this piggy does???
More Better Sonnet Writing
Writing a sonnet is anything but pat:
Sweating at computer with verbs dangling.
My rhetorical nerves are shot & shat:
Trying to deconstruct and be newfangling.
Free verse would seem to be more better
Because at least the rhymes don’t matter
Yet the more I try to free the letter
The more my thoughts do spread and scatter.
Just now I rhymed etter and atter not
Thinking that the closeness might sound weird
But to real poets it's not a Gordian knot
If Donne did it, hey it’s greatly revered.
To sum up the fourteen and leave sans reprieve
If you’re sonnetically challenged, just grieve!
Chant a Crazy Carol, Carol!
Sing a song that soars without an ending,
Sounds though un-united yet uniquely blending;
Open mouths and joyous voices silence rending!
Shout a lyric strong and limitless of vision,
Foreign words are understood by mutual mission;
When logic’s lost the heart still makes a decision.
What’s deeply human and cuts through social lines,
Also removes the internalized divisive whines:
We’re all people, have suffered and want new designs.
Note keys don’t match: one rhythm we may resist
But if our lives are to have one just harmonious twist
Our crazy carols, our chants, must ring: persist, persist, persist.
Cease? Seize and Persist: From Prop8 to Propag8.
How long the wait for freedom’s state will last
While pace so slow inches toward bigots demise?
It’ll take more than reaction to numberless ills amassed,
To stop stumbling, communal fumbling, for full rights prize.
Suffering and abuse alone don’t stoke the fire that feeds the ire --
Each decade abides, with silence or grumbling, massive hurts unaccounted;
The many living with pain and fear though suffering's most dire,
Fear greater ills will storm and catastrophe if rebel acts are mounted.
When one is dulled to present hurts because
A daily grind numbly is encroachment known,
One turns from contrasting gifts pledged from intangible laws:
Policy’s no comfort when facing injustice alone.
An oiled smooth process to justice just don’t exist:
Change requires community to persist, persist, persist.
("Don't"s on purpose, Ms. McGillycuddy)
For and Since for Time
whitsundaysRT @MissShonah Using this for lesson today - GREAT find! http://bit.ly/GpmdC
We often use ‘for’ and ‘since’ when talking about time.
for + period A period is a duration of time, for example: 5 minutes, 2 weeks, 6 years. For means "from the beginning of the period until the end of the period." For can be used with all tenses.
since + point A point is a precise moment in time, for example: 9 o'clock, 1st January, Monday. Since means "from a point in the past until now." Since is normally used with perfect tenses.
A grammarian precise with prepositions of time/
Did contrast ‘for’ and ‘since’ in manner sublime/
For to period points/
And since point anoints:/
If you can’t distinguish it’s a rhetorical crime.
In word usage we must be precise,/
Time references clear and concise./
For duration a period’s good;/
For precise moment a points understood;/
And knowing the differences makes you grammar wise.
Sonnet to Sad Mad Same Sex Cal Couples
P8’s H8 B8)
Far west judges decided by six to one,
To vote as majority in state supreme court;
Upholding Prop eight’s same sex marriage shun:
They sided in concert with Catholic and Mormon support.
California’s got a mythic liberal reputation
That’s drawn thousands to hoped for liberated life;
Please note Reagan and OrangeCounty were no aberration;
For gays and progressives always found much strife!
In this country freedom to believe is a right
And that claim is most basic and protected.
But the use of faith to oppress is a Fright
As today when gay human rights are rejected.
Regardless what preachers may preach to the flocks,
Straight marriage for decades has been on the rocks.
Neither Stars Nor WideWorldWeb
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I trust in fortune
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of boons, of busts or hap inopportune;
I can’t predict what winds will bring
Nor where profits we can find.
I wish good futures I could sing
And leave ill forecasts far behind.
Yet though from laptop much data I derive
With wide world web divining all,
So wikipedia wild’s not a perfect jive?
The net’s a mega exhibition hall;
But tweets, I with bard prognosticate:
The end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.
SONNET 14
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
Sit in Silence my Sweet
(After double-dactylics, anapestic tetrameter, I think.
Da-da-dum, Da-da-dum, Da-da-dum, Da-da-dum.)
If you come to my desk with a thought to be shared
I will listen and scribe with my ear sense acute
It’s my gift and my doom with attention ensnared
To spectate and relate and give name to your fruit.
If you come to my bed with a fire in your gut
I will turn to the side and remember desire;
Though I’d want to partake it’s no better than smut
Long ago veins did jell and congeal what was fire.
If you ask what I want and be clear in your quest
I will smile to your face and give weight to the plea;
So persist in the task with the proof its no jest:
If I sense there’s a doubt in a sec I will flee.
Your opinion is moot as I sit with my breath;
What you think of my state with glass bell as a bar,
Does not count nor deter as I face even death
On zabuton, censer's smoke and a bell that’s not far.
Double-Dactyl Dare
aureliom: RT @qatesiuradewyo @zem42 @mactavish @qatesiuradewyo Write sonnet about double-dactyls?
First shot not a sonnet:
Hark to a tale of woe/
Follow me while I rue./
Dress’d in a purplish throe,/
This is the trick I do:
Troubling Task in pain,/
Hollow the dared verse;/
Painfully writ in vain/
Iamb would be less a curse.
Think of the verse in deed/
Trochees with end strong impend/
Last scann’d foot stress will plead,/
Stunting a Dactyl end.
Drear double dactyl – Foo!/
Why did I get disease?/
Welcoming ‘Take me flu’./
Dum duh duhs --thoughts decrease.
Net Love Sonnet
Now dull substance of my flesh is thought
Network connections open multi-tiered highway.
As social media reduces distance to naught
From limits far remote technology holds sway.
No matter then where keyboard and desktop stand
Upon the farthest point removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where thee would be.
But ah! Thought kills me that I am not thought,
To be the icon on the internet when thou are gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought
I must be content w/screen's frozen pic or email koan,
Though wifi connections have instant flow
Our heavy tears are videoclips of either’s woe.
SONNET 44
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought
I must attend time's leisure with my moan,
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
Song of the NET
Why don’t you with some greater sway
Overpow’r this oppressive master rhyme?
And revivify yourself in self-pleasing way
With means more blessed than surfing away the time?
Now spend you many laptop trippy hours
And many evenings on the internet
With blooming sites, bouquets of online flowers
Poetry simulated site but ne’er a poet’s tete-a-tete:
So should the lines of poems your soul dictates,
Which grooved keyboard of processor nee pen,
With soft verse ware it procreates
to someday birth fine Koan of Zen.
To pen yourself away steels poets will
And write you must, drawn by your own sweet skill.
SONNET 16
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unset
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
So: Net (at) 12 (a.m.) Laptop Lament
When I do count digits that tell the time,
And see the long day brought to nondormant night;
When I behold the papers past prime,
And screens docs to print with black on white;
When lofty drafts sit silent and creativity leaves
And all my pieces still sans audience remain unheard,
Which midnight work my soul bereaves,
And new-born spleen blocks better phrase & word.
Then of my duty do I question make,
That I among the wastes of time must go,
Since poems and fiction do keyboard forsake
And die as fast as screen reboots aglow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defense
Save published print & screw him when he takes me hence.
SONNET 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence
Twitanelle
Twit’s “what are you doing” objectives
Inviting all slight piece to write
Enable minutiae posting compulsives.
Spanning liberals to conservatives
Inserting daily bliss or blight
Retweeting likes with superlatives
Some tweets can be a bit corrosive
Giving burn or cut or slight:
Eats at relationships and is erosive
But one may well see words collaborative
To heal hurts and make them right:
For deep held putdowns restorative.
Verbose tweeters with posts discursive
Whom relationship fantasies excite
Are duped: words magnets? sadly illusive
Whatever one considers twitter’s might
In social media’s attention net fight
Be happy if a post or two give some sweet light
And words calm rather than anger or fright.
SONNET 17
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme
So Not 17
Who’d believe my tweets in time to come,
If they be filled with blurbs and adverts
Or bits of fluff and daily boring details numb
Which deep life perverts and from truth diverts.
If I could write the beauty without lie
And in fresh numbers number all the graces
(Which most shallow twitter’s posts belie.)
What poetic touches would fill twit’s 140 spaces.
So should my entries with the vision of a sage
Be scorn’d like men of less truth than tongue;
And when misunderstood & ignored I rage
I’ll doggedly return to meter of an antique song:
But were some reader pause, read it and give it time,
I would rejoice and bask in other’s pleasure of my rhyme.
When I consider the senescent lows
Of life’s diminishment and attraction’s loss,
And laptop screen reflects old faces as foes
Whereon the youths consider old age dross;
When we perceive that youths as plants shoot up,
Fertilized and watered by tumescent desire
Vaunt in their youthful sap, a brimming sweet cup
And we in solitary licked-lip-state perspire.
So when web site presents youth on display
Presenting pics of lusty youth before our sight,
Where wasteful urge flaccidly brings dismay,
We let ruddy exhibited nude pixilate to white;
In tug of war with time for squeeze of youth
Our hair departs, wrinkles accrue: hot blood’s uncouth.
SONNET 15
When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
Rhapsodomania’s Lament
Villanelle’s a cruel mistress.
Sonnet's just a bitch.
Haiku causes distress:
Poetry’s a painful hitch.
Free verse seems easier task
Until you're in its midst
Unrhymed lines loosely mask
Draconian rules: I’m pissed.
The boy stands on the burning deck
While 'me' staring at the screen:
He’s eating peanuts by the peck
And moi, I’m slowly turning green.
Why did I think to rhyme would be
A pleasant pastime fad?
It’s not at all a joyful spree
By Will, I’ve wordily been had.
Do Not Drop Sonnets for the Villanelle
" @LucyFurLeaps I am half way through my first assignment question- was going to be sonnets but is now the villanelle option...could be a long night..hmm"
Do not drop sonnets for the villanelle
Fourteen lines are sweeter path
So write, write and in the sonnet dwell
Though Dylan went gently through that hell
Because words cut forked lightning swath
He went bold thru flames in hard form to dwell
Great classic poets mold in sonnet shell
They count the words and do the math
Extol, extol these poems with rhythmic bell
Wild bards who in their youth did dwell
With facile rhymes down easy path
I doubt are Thomases strolling thru verse hell.
Brave bards, rhyme cards, who strut thru searing hell
Scan lines with guts (and all their wrath):
Fie, Fie against the dreaded villanelle!
And you, my tweet, as your soft words jell
Douse, dunk me now with gentle word bath.
Write, rhyme and in the sonnet dwell:
Fie, Fie against the dreaded villanelle!
A: This is the media:twitters come and go/
Touch typists: the short tweet’s the thing/
B: laptop screens all followers showing,/
Silvery lights on papers strewn aglow./
C: This is the media:social contacts do grow/
With multiple posts that new contacts bring/
D: (of updates trivial to the informative string)/
Visible faces in icons strung out in a row./
E: This is the media. Time shall surely reap/
A flow of Cash from the fund raising world,/
F: In other sites where other schemes be slung;/
Yet glow They here embedded, as among/
G: The long tweet lists a following sweep/
Some silver-coined plan to monetize unfurled
(apologies to e.e. cummings)
See Below
this is the garden:colours come and go,
this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
e.e. cummings
Only until this evening is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the keyboard fingers fall,
And on the screen to a page extended,
Smoothly with Brazilian music blended,
The screen glow gives shadows on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of drafts, by all my hopes attended.
And then, adios, bye-bye – that plan is gone.
The cover was a khaki I can forget
The pages and chapters, every one.
Key words not ever, and the style not yet;
But just for this eve my unborn son
My manuscript, bad pun: son has set.
Edna St. Vincent Millay Sonnet XVOnly until this cigarette is ended,A little moment at the end of all,While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,And in the firelight to a lance extended,Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,The broken shadow dances on the wall,I will permit my memory to recallThe vision of you, by all my dreams attended.And then, adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.Yours is a face of which I can forgetThe colour and the features, every one,The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;But in your day this moment is the sunUpon a hill, after the sun has set.
To A Twitter Writer With Self Doubts (Apologies to W. Shakespeare's #Sonnet 11)
As fast as thou shalt write, so fast thou growest
In a tweet of thine thou may be judged the smartest:
And that deep thought which freshly thou bestowest
Thou mayst call thine when thou from thought convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase:
Without this folly, dullness and old cliché.
If all were minded so, the tweets should cease
And hundreds of followers depart, go far away.
Let those Nature hasn’t given poetic rapport
Bare wordless and dry, from updates vanish:
Attend, whom she best endow’d she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She keyboarded thee for real, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst post more, not let that copy die.
I am a little tweet crafted on the sly/
Of phrases original anything but trite;/
Fresh choice words chosen to delight/
And deeper meanings meant to imply./
You who compose beyond limits tight/
And one-forty tweet limits would decry:/
If you would consider these small fry/
Would also dismiss haiku and Zen delight./
So having squeezed poetry in few lines/
To present & inspire in characters little/
Yet flourishing because of confines,/
Giving import & worth transmittal./
But hark, this tweet described with zeal/
Isn’t the norm but exception, a beau ideal./
HOLY SONNETS. V.
Of elements, and an angelic sprite ;But black sin hath betray'd to endless nightMy world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.You which beyond that heaven which was most highHave found new spheres, and of new land can write,Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I mightDrown my world with my weeping earnestly,Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.But O, it must be burnt ; alas ! the fireOf lust and envy burnt it heretofore,And made it fouler ; let their flames retire,And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zealOf Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal
John Donne
Chinese Adult Theme Park #Twittericks Pre/Post @ammonty Edit
Verse 1a: The hardworking Chinese with rigid regime/
Are erecting a park with humpy sex theme/
Verse 1b: So now they’ll cavort/
With close physical sport/
Enjoy what once was only wet dream.
Verse 2a: A Chinese entrepreneurial theme park
For adult play and sex did embark
Verse 2b: Giant genitals enlarged
Though nothing discharged
These figures and ads were left in the dark.
Verse 3a: The evangelists who are so right wing/
Abhor Chinese communist’s godless sting/
Verse 3b: But when closing a park/
With sex purposes stark/
Both are birds feathered with similar wing.
A: The little word tight windows that twitter provides
Is challenging goal but with some poet’s goals coincides;
B: To bring complex thought to this given small space
Is opportunity for showcasing poet’s pithy grace.
C: A wordsmith and rhymer with laptop or quill
Wants a rhythm and format her thoughts to distill;
D: Not all poets want to limit their page
To one-forty characters – some do rage!
E: But twitter was never planned as a venue --
A sonnet for twitter was not on the menu:
F: Each piece was an answer to the question
“What are you doing?” -- not poetic expression.
G: So though tweeters object ‘to be continued’ posts/
Twit poets skirmish with Shakespearean ghosts.
Twit Sonnet 2
From fairest tweeters we desire in the piece
That each pithy prose lines might somehow be
Some useful nugget, notice or press release
To record and save in our crowded memory:
Yet they, the wits of characters one forty long
Fill the space with self-serving bits and fuel
Or the offer of goods & services for a song
But others dangle hopes somewhat cruel.
The question presented of ‘what are you doing’
Doesn’t lead you to seek to inform beyond
The smallest of trivia in your life brewing
Rather than matter considered a treasury bond.
Pity the seeker or else this note provide
Useful data, humor, wit or some useful guide.
Twit Sonnet 3
These posts that with gentle words did frame
The current deeds and acts or a thing to sell
For many tweeter comes to the same
In bits of trivia most one-forty’s do excel:
But never resting time leads tweeters on
To monetize the medium and make dollars there
Bring checks and profits so empty coffers are gone,
The dream of monetize is realized everywhere.
Then, were not balances in accounts a plus,
And bountiful exchanges result to the good;
Many a writer would abandon or raise a great fuss
And most participants would grumble and brood:
Still messages distilled through the pithy tweet
Even when minor give substance most sweet.
Twit Sonnet 4
Words to read, why look’st thou text sadly?
Tweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lovest thou which thou receivest not gladly,
Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-turned words
By authors enclosed, do offend thine eye
They do but sweetly chide thee, these herds
Of phrases and thoughts whose limit is the sky.
Mark how one tweet, sweet partner to another,
Expands each to each by mutual partnering
Each tweeter adding information to every other
When at its best twitter posts in tune do sing.
These brief writ tweets might not suite to a tee
But whatever the challenges: posts are free.
Poetic tweeters agree that couplets are in tune/
With a format beyond which 140 characters immune.
To pen thoughts in prim double lines/
Is conducive and classier for complex designs.
A sonnet would separate into seven tweets/
But good verse requires skilled poetic elites.
So two lines a whack is what’ll replace/
Prior Limericks filling a five line space.
Some tweeters object ‘to be continued’ posts/
Sonneteers wish to challenge Shakespeare’s ghosts
Sonnets have a format requiring lines fourteen/
Poets with class want scansion and length to be clean.
So sonneteers must versify and poetize with class/
Attend to rhythm or literati critics will descend en masse.
[1][1] Dick, not Lon Chaney
